Fish Delish!

Yesterday, I posted about the Dark Days Challenge.  Today, I am posting my first entry. The challenge is to make a meal of sustainable, organic, local, and ethical (SOLE) foods. I have chosen one of our favorite, yet quick and easy, meals: Fish Tacos Modified Baja Style.

Good Conscience Tacos

Baja is famous for its fish tacos that are widely available from street vendors selling from small carts with propane powered fryers. We love to eat them but realize that deep fried fish with a floury crust is not the healthiest food. Adaptation! I decided that I could create a healthier style of fish tacos for our more frequent enjoyment. Be gone floury, fried, greasy crust! Enter spicy, diced, delicious fish cubes!

Savory, delicious fish

It seems easy to think, “I’ll just whip up some fish tacos tonight”, until you have to think about where the fish comes from and if it is sustainable and ethical. The best fish for this recipe comes from the large predatory fish like tuna, wahoo, or dolphin fish, which produce meaty, solid fillets.

The majority of the fish we eat here is locally caught; either just off of the coast in the Pacific, or in the Sea of Cortez, on the opposite side of our peninsula. In the past, Mexico, just like many other countries (including the US), has been ignorant of the dangers of overfishing certain species. Fortunately, Mexico has taken huge steps to protect its bounty of sea resources.

My favorite fish for this recipe is local, line caught yellowfin tuna. It is caught just off our coast from small boats called pangas. We buy it seasonally from our favorite fish monger at the local Mercadito, or open air market, and freeze the fillets for use later. Best of all, yellowfin tuna is not a protected species and appears to be increasing in population. Yay!

Put this in your taco!

And the rest of my ingredients? Yup,they meet the SOLE requirements, too! We are very picky about tortillias. Our preference is a thicker style that will hold up well for making enchiladas, tacos and other Mexican dishes. We actually import the majority of our tortillias from a small, family owned factory in San Diego, about 50 kilometers from here, called Porkyland. Mr. M’s parents used their tortillias in a Mexican restaurant they owned years ago and they are still the best. (Sorry Rosarito). By the way, Porkyland tortillias have made it to the big time; they are available at Costco and Amazon!

Next I had to examine the cheese. Sometimes we use local Queso Cotija, the tasty crumbly cheese, but I was out of that. I did have a chunk of Queso Viejo, which accurately translates to Old Cheese. It is very strong and uniquely tasty; maybe too strong for the fish. So I added some local Monterey Jack cheese to tone it down. Perfect!

Tomatoes from the garden? Check. Cabbage? Hmmm, not ready yet. No lettuce either. We do have an abundance of ready to harvest Wong bok, a type of Chinese cabbage. One leaf was more than enough to shred for this recipe. Take my word for it, not the best choice! Use regular white cabbage or, if you have to, lettuce. The Wong bok was too strong!

The Baja Secret Sauce? All fish tacos in Baja are offered with a creamy white sauce. It is usually, crema, local cultured cream that is not sour, combined with mayonnaise. I prefer to use plain nonfat thick yogurt, combined with mayonnaise. Okay, here is my failing: the mayo. I don’t make it, I buy it, but it is sustainable and available locally.

The red salsa? Homemade and home canned. I used my Salsa de Arbol. I will post about that later.

What else? Ah yes, my secret taco seasoning: THE special touch to the fish; here it is:

Taco Seasoning

1 Tbs dried ground California Chiles: NOT commercial chili powder

1 Tbs coarsely ground dried Chile Mulatto or Chile Ancho

1 tsp granulated garlic or 2-3 cloves minced fresh garlic

¼ tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp ground cumin

½ tsp dried marjoram, crushed

½ tsp dried oregano, crushed

Salt and cracked black pepper to taste

This is sufficient for about ½ to ¾ of a pound of cubed fresh fish. It can also be quite tasty on ground beef or turkey. If you like it hotter, use New Mexico Chiles instead of California. You can substitute any ground dried chiles actually. This is just our preferred combination. The key ingredient, surprisingly, is the cinnamon. Don’t be afraid! Use it!

To use: Place fish fillets in freezer until just slightly frozen, or defrost frozen fillets, so that the fillet will be solid enough to easily cut into cubes. Put about 1 tablespoon of your preferred fat (I use coconut oil) into a skillet and heat. Add fish cubes and toss until they are opaque on the outside. Add seasoning and cook until the fish flakes easily. The fish will exude some moisture. Cook until the moisture and seasoning adheres to the cubes. This is just a couple of minutes.

The last condiment? Fresh limes to squeeze over the fish. We do have an abundance of limes from our trees, but I decided to use a more unusual citrus, a lemon from our Pink Lemonade Tree. Yes, as you can see in the photo it is pink inside when ripe! It is also a very pretty tree with green and white variegated leaves and striped lemons! The taste? It is a sport of the regular yellow Eureka lemon so familiar in US markets and tastes just like it.

And to accompany the tacos? Locally harvested pinto beans, previously home canned and just heated and smashed. When I can them, I add  homegrown onion and garlic before sealing. Delish and the ultimate fast food!

The musical fruit

The final result? A quick, easy, delicious SOLE meal that will brighten even the darkest day. Start to plating less than 20 minutes. Try it and let me know if you like it.

Dark Days Challenge

I try my best to be a localvore : one who eats foods grown locally whenever possible, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Fortunately, living in Baja is ideal for this. I can garden all year and there are great sources for locally grown and produced food. After all, how much produce eaten in the US actually comes from Mexico?

This year I decided to see just how well I am doing as a localvore by entering The Dark Days Challenge. Here is some information about it and a form if you are interested in challenging yourself. I don’t know how well I will do because there are some things that Mr. M and I like that are not grown locally, like peanuts, but we do our best!

Awww, Cranberries!

Cranberry-plum and Cranberry-orange butters

I had some bags of cranberries languishing in my freezer. Why did I buy them in the first place? I am the only one here that likes loves cranberries. Mr. M won’t eat jellied cranberry sauce.  I think no self-respecting turkey dinner or even a turkey sandwich is valid unless there are cranberries involved.

So I decided that the cranberries need to come out of the freezer so I can eat them. I thought about making juice, then jelly, out of them but I have been fighting a cold with a cough that wears me out. It sounded like too much effort.

As I was rummaging in the freezer, I retrieved a bag of frozen Santa Rosa plum halves and a bag of supremed oranges, both from my garden. I was sort of winging it as I went along. Here’s the result of my freezer mining: four half pints of cranberry plum butter and four half pints of cranberry orange butter.

Here is a photo of my taste tester, Mr. M, who decreed them yummy. (Wait! He doesn’t even like cranberries!) Yes, that is some on the end of his nose…

Yes, it is good! Even on his nose.

Now for how these came to be:

Put the cranberries and plum halves (or orange sections) into a big pot. Cook them until the cranberries’ skins pop. Now a sane person would add a couple of cups of water here but not me! When the fruit softens blend with an immersion blender until the fruit is smooth. Measure five cups of fruit and add 2 cups of sugar. Cook to the desired consistency. Ladle into half pint jars and seal in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Now for the truth: it really needed the water. Instead of a fruit butter consistency, it is more like a Mexican fruit paste, an ate. Slightly stiffer but really delicious! I am just going to cut it into thin slices and enjoy it with my turkey!

Passing the Addiction Forward

The final product

A couple of weeks ago my daughter visited us here in Baja. She asked me about pickles. Remember that I have mentioned a few times about how much my family loves the pickled stuff. She had read my blog entry about my giant jar of refrigerator pickles and was tasting them when she asked when I was going to teach her the art of pickling, so she in turn with could do it with her younger daughter.  My chance to pass the canning addiction on! Muhahahaha!

The very next day I gave her the first lesson: Simple refrigerator pickles. I chose refrigerator pickles as her introduction because it is a basic lesson. No giant pots of boiling water, no scary hissing pressure canners , no sterilization techniques, no special jars and lids, not even a giant vat of boiling food.  Just one pot to heat the simple brine, a recycled jar some spices, and a few vegetables.

In my best cooking lesson fashion, I laid out a variety of pickling spices:

And we prepared an assortment of vegetables suitable for brining:

She then packed the vegetables into a repurposed jar. The most difficult part here is learning that a vertical pack allows the most ingredients into the jar. She then added the canning salt and the spices of her choice.

After heating a 50-50 solution of vinegar and water she poured it into the jar.

Here is the finished jar:

Put the lid on, refrigerate, and wait a week and it becomes fresh pack pickles! The photo at the top was taken today.They are ready to enjoy.

Too bad she had to fly home before they were they were ready. All the more for me! She did however return home to make another jar with my granddaughter. This weekend, they tasted their first creation, called me from Texas, and declared them to be “nummylicious”!

Have you ever made fresh pack pickles? Try it!

Independence Day!

Today is Mexico’s Independence Day, a grand fiesta and National holiday. We were quite surprised when our trash was picked up this morning, our regular pick up day. I thought they would take the day off. Great work ethic! This is a huge holiday here and I wrote about it previously here.

To celebrate this holiday, which actually started last night, I made a traditional Mexican fiesta dish: pozole.  Perhaps you have eaten, or even heard of menudo, the traditional Mexican New Year’s Day dish (reported to cure a hangover). Pozole is menudo’s elegant cousin.  Menudo is made from tripe and hominy, or pozole, as it is called in Mexico. The dish by that name does have the corn, but also has pork and, in my recipe, chicken, and best of all, no tripe! It can however include pigs feet; not yesterday though because I was making a batch that I could also can for later.

So after all that rambling here is my recipe:

Pozole for dinner and canning

2 Tablespoons vegetable oil (I used olive)

2 small pork loin roasts, cut into roughly 1 inch cubes (about 3 pounds each)

8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs cut into roughly 1 inch cubes

1 #10 can of prepared hominy, rinsed and drained; or if you are really ambitious you can prepare about 13 cups from dried nixtamal, but that is a whole other deal

2 medium onions, chopped

1 entire head of garlic, peeled and sliced

10 peeled green chiles, diced into roughly half inch squares. Anaheim or Poblanos or other relatively mild chiles are good

1-2 jalapeno chiles, minced (optional)

Salt and fresh ground pepper

1 bay leaf

Chicken broth, about 10-12 cups

In your gigantic soup pot, heat oil, add the meat and cook until it just loses its color. Add the onions and cook until limp. Add garlic and chiles.  Add the pozole corn. Fill the pot with the chicken broth, depending on how much broth you like in your soups. Add the bay leaf, salt and pepper. Be careful of the salt, depending on the saltiness of your broth.

Bring the soup to a boil. This will create foam on the top; skim this off. Now you are ready to can the pozole. Fill each quart jar about three quarters full with an even mixture of the solids (meat, corn and chiles). Fill the jar with the broth to 1” below the top. Cap with 2 piece caps and can in a pressure canner for 90 minutes. Leave the bay leaf in the pot. Cook the rest of the soup for about one hour, or until the meat and the corn are tender. Remove the bay leaf and discard.

Serve the pozole in bowls with minced fresh onion, cilantro, dried oregano, lemon or lime halves to squeeze over the soup, sliced avocados, or salsa, if desired. (We prefer the first four).

This Big Boy Stays Home

My Mocklaussen Pickles

My homemade pickles are always greeted with positive remarks when I offer them to friends or family. I consider this to be a great compliment because I am always fearful that they will turn out limp or slippery or worse. But they all seem to have turned out well. (Whew!)

This big old jar of pickles won’t be going anywhere; it is for me. Well, I will share them with Mr.M, but he is not a big fan of pickles. Ha! More for me!

This particular jar of pickles has not been preserved. I simply fermented it for a few days on my counter then popped it into my refrigerator. Let me tell you, these pickles are yummy and extra crisp!! And the best part is that they couldn’t be easier to make.

Here’s the process:

My Mocklaussen Pickles

enough small to medium cucumbers to pack tightly into the intended jar (mine is a recycled gallon pickle jar-I told you I like pickles!). I clipped a miniscule part off of the blossom end of each cucumber because it can have enzymes that will soften the pickles.

A 50% brine solution to cover the cucumbers.That is equal amounts of commercial white or cider vinegar (I used cider-hence the amberish color) and purified water. I add a quarter cup of canning salt to each 8 cups of this mixture. This is a basic pickling  brine.  You can use more salt but I like a little less salt. I didn’t heat this (you know what a radical I am!); I just dissolved the salt in the in the vinegar and water solution and poured it over the cucumbers.

I add a lot of sliced fresh garlic, as you can see.

I used mustard seed, dill seed, whole black peppercorns, and dried hot chile flakes. I added these directly to the jar. I used about one tablespoon of each for the gallon jar. If you use a smaller jar you can adjust these accordingly.

Now, I am sure you have noticed the leaves in the top and bottom of the jar. They are grape leaves. I have heard that these or cherry  leaves have tannin in them and help the pickles stay crisp.

That’s it! Simple! Have I tried these yet? You bet! They are crunchy and just pickley enough! (Pickley? Is that a word?)

The Zen of Laundry

 

Looks okay to me

When I was growing up, it was the norm for families to have a laundry line in their yard. Some families even had a specific laundry, or wash, day. We didn’t that I know of, it seemed with my family we always had laundry. When I was very little I had the job of folding the wash and taking it to the appropriate room. When I could finally reach the clothesline, laundry from beginning to end was one of my jobs.

Not that I minded it. We had an electric washer, thank goodness. And not one of those wringer types that could tear your arm off either! It lived in our garage and just outside the door was the laundry line.  The lines were strung in parallel rows between two T-shaped metal poles.

I loved to hang laundry. It was one of the few times when I could escape from my family and not be studying. (I worked hard for my grades) It was peaceful and I had a sense of simple accomplishment when I finished hanging it out. I could hang the clothes in an order that appealed to me. Have I ever mentioned in my blog how compulsive I am about sorting stuff? I love organization! So much so, that my kids used to think I was magic because I could direct them to the exact place where something like the scissors or tape was stored. As recently as this summer my grandson commented about how I sort the silverware when I put in the dish drainer. But I digress…

Since our retirement here to Baja, we have worked to reduce our expenses, as well as our carbon footprint. We are lucky to have a washer and dryer here in our home, BUT I have been lusting after a clothesline for a long time. It hasn’t happened, so I am trying a different tactic.

We have a series of posts that we were using to support some grapevines that we are no longer growing. I decided to put the unused posts to support some clothesline rope to make a sort of makeshift clothesline. It seems to work pretty well and can hold a single large load of laundry.  Despite the fact that it is right in front of my house, I think it still looks okay.

Today when I hung out my first load of laundry, I was immediately transported back to my teen years. I felt that same peace and sense of tranquility I enjoyed then. When I gathered the dry clothes in, I really enjoyed the fragrance of line dried laundry again!

Do you line dry your laundry? Is it a good or bad experience for you?

Do You Chutney?

Since we were on our trip to Europe during the Spring planting time here, I have little in the vegetable garden aside from some exuberant tomatoes and some collards that defy death, even with little water. Oh yeah, and my baby sweet potato plants that I started from slips grown from a potato while we were gone. I am now getting ready to plant for our late summer and fall season.

We do have some fruit trees that are at the end of their season, producing small amounts of fruits for the kitchen, such as half a dozen Santa Rosa plums, half a dozen golden plums, and a few nectarines. We have plenty of jams already, so what to do? Hmmmm… how about chutney? What is it? What do I do with it after I make it? Well, worth a try! The results? Delicious!!

Here is the photo:

It is rich, fruity, spicy and very interesting. The pieces of fruit are readily identifiable, yet each flavor adds to the complex nature of the mixture. I must have read over a dozen different recipes. I took the idea and went with it. Here is my recipe.

Save the Fruit Chutney

12 cups prepared fruit*

1 cup golden raisins

½ cup candied ginger cut into ¼ inch pieces

½ cup each diced red and green sweet peppers

1 cup diced onion

1 minced jalapeno chile

1 entire head of garlic, chopped

1 lemon

1 lime

4 cups cider vinegar

2 tsp. canning salt

4 cups dark brown sugar

½ tsp ground cloves

½ tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp each yellow and black mustard seeds

1 Tbs dried mulatto or red chile flakes (I used the mulatto)

¼ tsp cayenne pepper

*I used the following: most of a package of overly sugared dried pears, cubed, that I covered with hot water and soaked overnight with the raisins. To this I added diced Santa Rosa and golden plums, nectarines and apples. I removed the peels from the lemon and lime with a potato peeler and minced it. I seeded and sectioned them and all to the fresh fruit.

Place reconstituted, dried fruit in a very large saucepan with the vinegar, sugar, peppers, onions, garlic, salt and spices. Cook until the dried fruits start to become tender. Add the fresh fruits and cook down until as thick as you like.

I put this into 12 half-pint jars and sealed them in a BWB (that’s a Boiling Water Bath, to non-canners), for 10 minutes. Lucky for me there was half a jar left over to try it out. Sweet, tangy, spicy, chunky… definitely not a jam.

Now, you ask: what do I do with 12 jars of this stuff? I can imagine it on chicken, pork, toasted cheese sandwiches, stirred into rice, with any cheese and crackers, with Indian food, as a salad dressing ingredient… in other words: YUM!!

Salsa!

If you have been reading my blog for a time, you will know that we shop at the “Swami”, or local farmers’ market, on Sundays. This week I was overjoyed to discover beautiful Roma tomatoes and fresh tomatillos for only six pesos for a kilo (that’s about 2.2 pounds for Americans). That works out to less than 25 cent s a pound (US). The price was so low that several of us, Mexican and American, questioned if the price was pesos or dollars. I snapped up as much as we could carry in our shopping bag.

Because we had a commitment Sunday afternoon, I put the fruit into bowls on the counter. The fruit was so fresh that the next morning my kitchen smelled like tomato vines. Now that is fresh!

Yesterday, I made salsa! Two different types. Opposites? Well, one is red and one is green. One is smooth and one is chunky. One is milder and one is hotter (I hope). Why two at one time? Because it is a much more efficient use of the canner (I only have to heat it up once) and my time. Not to mention that I only have to clean the mess up once!

Here is what I made: Roasted Roma Salsa and Roasted Tomatillo Salsa. The Roma salsa is chunky and hotter. The tomatillo salsa is smoother and milder.

I wanted to be as efficient as possible so I made them both at the same time and combined steps. For instance, I roasted both fruits at the same time, in separate pans, for 25 minutes in a 500 degree oven.  I switched the pans about halfway through and roasted them until they began to show some charred spots. I discovered that this made peeling the Romas so easy! The semi-charred skins slipped right off.  I didn’t peel the tomatillos.

Wait, you say, if I peeled the skin off of the Romas didn’t I lose the charred flavor? Not so! As I cut the peeled Romas up they produced some juice which I drained into the baking pan.  I deglazed the pan (a fancy word for scraping up the crusty brown stuff) with the tomato juice and added it back into the tomatoes.  Because the tomatillos don’t have much juice, I used the lime juice and vinegar from the recipe to deglaze that pan. Easy!

Let me say this right now: I use fresh lemon or lime juice from my garden in my canning. I realize that USDA recipes tell us only to use bottled juice, but I prefer the flavor of my homegrown citrus. These recipes also include vinegar so I feel confident in the acidity of the resulting products. Since I use these just for Mr. M and I, I am willing to use my personal judgment. If you choose to use my recipes, follow your own conscience.

Here are my salsa recipes:

Roasted Roma Tomato Salsa

11 cups of prepared Roma tomatoes (about 2 kilos, or 5 pounds).

To prepare: place whole washed tomatoes in a single layer in a large flat baking pan. Roast in a 500 degree oven, turning once, until the skins begin to char. Peel and dice the tomatoes to your preference. I leave mine in kind of big chunks, maybe 12 pieces to a large tomato.

2 cups chopped hot chiles. I used 2 fresh charred and peeled poblanos and the rest minced, fresh jalapenos.

2 ½ cups chopped onion

6 large cloves garlic, sliced

2 Tablespoons dried chile flakes

1 cup chopped, fresh cilantro

1 teaspoon dried oregano

¼ teaspoon ground cumin, or to taste. I think that many salsas have too much cumin.

½ cup lemon juice

1 cup apple cider vinegar

2-3 teaspoons kosher salt (to taste)

Place all ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. Ladle into pint jars leaving ¼ inch headspace and cap with 2 piece lids. Process 15 minutes in a boiling water bath.

Note: when peeling and chopping the hot chiles you may want to wear rubber gloves to keep from burning your hands. I don’t do this and last night my left hand was stinging!

Makes about 6 ½ pints of salsa, but your mileage may vary.

Tomatillo Salsa

11 cups prepared tomatillos (see Roasted Roma Salsa for how to do this. Omit peeling the tomatillos, and just cut them in half after roasting)

2 cups chopped onion. I used onions from my garden. They were half grown with a large base and heavy green tops. I wanted the extra green of the tops. I suppose a combination of dry and green onions would work.

2 cups chopped fresh hot chiles. I used a combination of fresh poblanos and jalapenos.

6 large cloves chopped garlic

1 cup chopped cilantro

1-2 teaspoons kosher salt

¼ teaspoon ground cumin

½ cup fresh lime juice

1 cup apple cider vinegar

Place all ingredients except cilantro in a large pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes, or until the vegetables are soft. Puree with a blender until smooth. I use a stick blender. Add cilantro and blend again leaving bits of cilantro. Bring back up to a boil and ladle into half pint or pint jars  leaving ¼ inch headspace and and cap with 2 piece lids. Process 10 minutes for half pints, or 15 minutes for pints, in a boiling water bath.

Note: when peeling and chopping the hot chiles you may want to wear rubber gloves to keep from burning your hands. I don’t do this and last night my left hand was stinging!

Makes about 11 half pints of salsa, but your mileage may vary

You may notice that the lid on the pint of red salsa is white. This is the first time I have experimented with Tattler lids. I used four and I am relieved to say they all sealed perfectly!

Oh! And how did I manage to use just one canner for both salsas? Here’s my method: First I made the tomatillo salsa up to the point of blending it. I let it cool while I prepared the Roma salsa and put those jars into the canner.  This accomplished two things. The tomatillos cooled enough to blend and I could rinse out the big pot from the Roma salsa. While the Roma salsa was in the canner, I blended, reheated, and finished putting the tomatillo salsa into the jars and capping them. I kept the jars in hot water in the big pot from the Roma salsa, and then transferred the jars to the canner when I removed the Roma salsa jars.

Last night we tried out the green salsa on some leftover roast pork for our dinner. Even without any aging it was yummy. It could have been a bit more picante for me, but Mr. M (the real Mexican in the family), likes his salsas milder.

Leftovers

It seems that anything that hangs around my kitchen too long is in danger of being canned. I’ve even pickled, purslane, a “weed” that grows in my garden. This week, I did something new.

Here in Baja, when you have certain take-out food, frequently the order comes with Mexican limes, limones, and radishes, sometimes grilled green onions or jalapeños. Recently, we enjoyed some carnitas from one of our favorite local restaurants, La Michoican.  Each of us, including the teenage grandson, ate as much as we could, yet there were a lot of leftovers.

I used the leftover meat, chips, onions, cilantro, and even a couple of spoonfuls of rice, to make tortillia soup. Hey, what law says tortillia soup has to be made from chicken? It was great made with pork!

But the radishes? I am the only one here willing to eat them and there were too many for me. Here is what I did with them:

Aren't they pretty?

Pickled radishes.  Here is how I did these:

I sliced the radishes about 1/16 of an inch thick. I wasn’t too careful about the thickness. I just wanted the slices thin enough to pickle but thick enough to retain their radish personality. I have a mandolin that I don’t use; I prefer my chef’s knife, so the slices are not exact.

I put the slices into a pint canning jar. Over these I poured the following pickling solution:

½ cup white vinegar

1/3 cup sugar

¼ tsp  yellow mustard seed

Pinch of celery seed

A couple of grinds of black pepper

I warmed the vinegar and sugar enough to dissolve the sugar, poured it over the radish slices, added the spices, put on the lid, shook the jar and refrigerated it.

I think I will give it a week or two before trying it. If I can wait that long…